Kant's Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction [Paperback]

In this book, Dennis Schulting presents a staunch defence of Kants radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge. This defence is mounted by means of a comprehensive analysis of what is arguably the centrepiece of Kants Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge is to be understood as the thesis that the possibility of knowledge of objects essentially and wholly depends on subjective functions of thought, or the capacity to judge by virtue of transcendental apperception, given sensory input. Subjectivism thus defined is not about merely the necessary conditions of knowledge, but nor is it claimed that it grounds the very existence of things.

Novel interpretations are provided of such central themes as the objective unity of apperception, the threefold synthesis, judgement, truth and objective validity, spontaneity in judgement, figurative synthesis and spatial unity, nonconceptual content, idealism and the thing in itself, and material synthesis. One chapter is dedicated to the interpretation of the Deduction by Kants most prominent successor, G.W.F. Hegel, and throughout Schulting critically engages with the work of contemporary readers of Kant such as Lucy Allais, Robert Hanna, John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and James Van Cleve.

Preface

Key to Abbreviations of Cited Primary Works

1 Kants Radical SubjectivismAn Introductory Essay

Part I: From Apperception to Objectivity

2 Kants Deduction From Apperception

3 Pure Consciousness Is Found Already in Logic: Apperception, Spontaneity, and Judgement

4 Gap? What Gap?On the Unity of Apperception and the Necessary Application of the

Categories

Part II: Nonconceptual Content, Space, and A Prilãâ